Law 112/2016—formally titled "Provisions on Assistance for Persons with Severe Disabilities Lacking Family Support," commonly known as the "After Us" law—is sound in its principles and aims. Yet the implementation decree of November 23, 2016, reveals significant gaps in how those aims will actually be realized.
First, a reassurance: this law does not sweep away everything that exists. Parents who have already placed their children in residential arrangements different from those outlined here need not fear for their security.
Article 1 invokes the foundational articles of the Italian Constitution—articles 2, 3, and 32 (on health) and article 38 (on social assistance)—as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which marks its tenth anniversary this year, though concrete implementation in Italy still lags far behind the ideal. The law reaffirms the necessity of ensuring the wellbeing of disabled persons, their full inclusion in society, and the provision of social and health services that allow them to live with dignity when family members can no longer provide care. It also mandates that multidisciplinary assessment units—composed of experts from various social and health sectors—work with the disabled person and their caregivers to develop an individualized project (already required by Law 328/2000, Article 14), safeguarding their future and full realization. The law also introduces a "care manager" to verify that the personalized plan is actually being carried out. In short, both law and decree promise every reasonable and just perspective. But implementation details and funding mechanisms have been handed to the regions—and this immediately creates the conditions for unequal treatment across the country.
The law does clarify the tools available to protect disabled persons on the material level. It lists the private-law instruments that families can use to direct assets and resources to their relatives: insurance policies, trusts, special funds with dedicated purposes, and fiduciary management contracts, including gifts to nonprofits. Most significantly, it introduces substantial tax incentives for these tools—higher deductions for insurance, and exemption from inheritance and gift taxes on assets placed in a trust for a disabled person. Yet even here, compared to the vast deduction opportunities available in America, we still fall short.
This is a mixed-welfare intervention law. Public actors at every level—the state, regions, municipalities, and local health authorities—participate. But it also requires private action: the assets and resources that families and private donors direct into dedicated funds must then be integrated with public resources.
The state has created a fund to finance various residential projects for disabled persons. However, the allocated resources—90 million euros for 2016, 38.3 million for 2017, and 56.1 million from 2018 onward—are unfortunately insufficient to establish independent living arrangements for all severely disabled people across the entire country.
Private associations can access this fund, provided their projects meet all requirements set by public authorities. Here lies another problem: while the law explicitly aims to prevent institutionalization—to avoid returning to the large, impersonal structures of the old asylums or massive hospitals—it imposes overly strict criteria for residential solutions. No more than five people per residential unit, and no more than two units in any single facility. This means that well-established communities we know, like Arcobaleno or Chicco, actually fall outside the criteria for accessing these funds.
This law reflects the trajectory of social policy in recent years: assuming limited state resources (each person may judge for themselves), it emphasizes the necessity of integrating public and private efforts. It actively encourages private initiative in line with the principle of horizontal subsidiarity (Constitution, Article 118)—the idea that initiatives should arise from below, with the state stepping in only where private actors cannot manage alone.
Yet fundamental questions remain unresolved, and this law does nothing to address them. They are left instead to the efficiency and initiative of individual regions, and to the capacity of private actors. What happens to parents with no resources to offer? More broadly, expecting families already overwhelmed by daily care to somehow organize themselves into complex projects—founding funds, establishing group homes—is unrealistic. Families need help from trained professionals or experienced associations to think through and build long-term projects. Support groups could help. Regular meetings where parents encounter one another and tackle these questions together. Pooled funds into which each family contributes what they can—in goods and money—for their children's futures. But who will help them do this work? I believe Fede e Luce has a role to play here—to ensure that families do not feel abandoned as they navigate this task.